Posted By Dan Greenfield on May 3, 2025 | 6 comments

The celebrated Mr. K. does the birthday honors for one of the all-time best…

By PAUL KUPPERBERG

If you tried telling Denny O’Neil that he was one of the best and most influential figures in the history of American comic books, he would chuckle modestly and deflect the praise. Instead of writing a memoir, he even deflected his own often fascinating life into fiction in The Perils of Captain Mighty and the Redemption of Danny the Kid. He once credited his being hired to write for Charlton Comics in the 1960s to the simple fact that he was “a carbon based lifeform that could type.” He made his bones writing Patsy and Hedy and Millie the Model stories for Marvel in the mid-1960s, then went on to help reshape and redefine comic book storytelling through his groundbreaking work at DC Comics on Batman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and other titles, all accomplished with a modest declaimer that all he was doing was his job.

In case you can’t tell, I’m a Denny O’Neil fan, although the first time I read him, it was a story written under the nom de plume, Sergius O’Shaughnessy, in a non-series science fiction story in Charlton Premiere. But once the St. Louis, Missouri, native’s real byline began appearing in DC Comics titles like Justice League of America, Bat Lash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern in 1968, I started to take notice. Denny, a newspaper reporter before fellow Missourian Roy Thomas convinced him to take the Marvel writer’s test, brought a journalistic sensibility to these overblown, hyperbolic tales of superhumans in impossible situations.

Denny — who was born 86 years ago, on May 3, 1939 — had the touch, possessing a solid grasp of storytelling into which he wove often morally complex, social and political issues so deftly, most readers didn’t realize they had learned anything until it was too late.

Editor Julie Schwartz may get the credit for putting together the team of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams in 1969, perhaps the most well-regarded creative duo of the 1970s, but that writer and artist pairing made magic all on their own.

It had been more than five years since Schwartz had introduced the “New Look” Batman in 1964, making the Dynamic Duo more grounded, with a sharper art style developed by Carmine Infantino. Then came the Camp Era driven by the Adam West TV series, but as the show petered out, Schwartz went all in by bringing the Darknight Detective back to his darker, gothic roots. Creators like Frank Robbins and Irv Novick made their marks, but readers had never experienced anything like O’Neil and Adams before. In addition to gravitas and atmosphere, they also introduced us to the scary, murderous Joker and brought Ra’s al Ghul and his daughter Talia into the mythos, influencing nearly every subsequent portrayal of Batman, from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns to Christopher Nolan’s film trilogy.

Denny, who died in 2020, was the first to admit he wasn’t always the right man for the job, like when it came to the 1972 revival of Captain Marvel in Shazam! Or that he really didn’t have a feel for the character when he took over writing the Man of Steel with Superman #233 (January 1971), launching the “Kryptonite Nevermore!” storyline. But even those occasional missteps had their moments and get lost under the weight of what followed, including (more) Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Doc Savage, Legends of the Dark Knight, Azrael, and, of course, Denny’s magnum opus, The Question, not to mention his Marvel work on such titles as Iron Man, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Daredevil.

Denny was also the author of several prose novels, including novelizations of the first two aforementioned Christopher Nolan Dark Knight films, Batman: Knightfall, the Question novel Helltown, and the previously noted roman a clef, The Perils of Captain Mighty and the Redemption of Danny the Kid. He also wrote The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, one of the best how-to write comics books available (and I say this as the author of such a tome myself, Paul Kupperberg’s Illustrated Guide to Writing Comics.

Oh yeah, and Denny was also an editor, and a damn fine one. He bought my first script at DC Comics in 1975 for a 10-page Superman Family story, and I would later develop my 1987 Phantom Stranger miniseries with him, before he got too busy running the Bat-office and had to hand the title off to another editor.

But as I said, Denny remained modest through it all, and even though I knew he would wave off any praise sent his way, it didn’t stop me from offering it to him. Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE WORKS BY DENNY O’NEIL:

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Charlton Premiere #2 (November 1967). Daring and different from the typical Comics Code-approved Charlton Comics fare, “Children of Doom,” by “Sergius O’Shaughnessy,” aka Dennis J. O’Neil, and artist Pat Boyette was a gritty dystopian tale that actually had something to say about fear, control, and evolution.

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Wonder Woman #178 (September/October 1968). It was a bold move to strip DC’s only female title character of her superpowers and turn her into an Emma Peel karate expert in a white jumpsuit, partnered with a wise little blind Asian martial arts master, I Ching, one Denny later came to regret.

In a 2007 online interview on Bubblegum Aesthetics Denny said, “At the time I thought I was serving the cause of feminism by making this woman self-made and then I immediately undercut that by having her have a male martial arts teacher. My heart was pure, but I now see (Gloria) Steinem’s point. To take the one really powerful [female] character in the comics pantheon and take away her powers was really not serving the cause of feminism.”

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Green Lantern #76 (April 1970). Unabashed four color activism, by O’Neil and Adams.

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Detective Comics #410 (April 1971). It takes “A Vow from the Grave” to help solve the murder of a circus sideshow performer and learn that families don’t necessarily have to be connected by bloodlines. Art by Adams and Dick Giordano.

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Batman #234 (August 1971). Somewhere along the way, Batman got all grim and gritty and serious but used to be he would find time to make some pompous bureaucrat wet his pants, just for a laugh. Art by Adams and Giordano.

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Batman #244, (September 1972). If I gotta explain to you why “The Demon Lives Again” is on this list, you’re probably reading the wrong column! Art by Adams and Giordano.

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Batman #251 (September 1973). Ditto “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge!” This was the story that put the “psycho” in psychopath for Batman’s old foe and breathed new life into a character Batman editor Julie Schwartz had put away on a shelf four years earlier.

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Detective Comics #457 (March 1976). The Dark Knight’s origin gets a major reworking in “There Is No Hope in Crime Alley” with the introduction of Dr. Leslie Thompkins, who is revealed to play a pivotal role in the life of young Bruce Wayne. Art by Giordano.

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Iron Man #169 (April 1983). Probably the best known of Denny’s Marvel work, and undoubtedly one of his most personal storylines, Tony Stark suffers a “Blackout” as a result of his drinking and is finally forced to start confronting his alcoholism. Art by Luke McDonnell and Steve Mitchell.

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The Question #1-36 (February 1987–April 1990). Corporate comics do not get any better than this! Art by Denys Cowan.

Cover by Bill Sienkiewicz — who also has a birthday today.

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The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics (Watson-Guptill, 2001). When the best in the business is willing to share with you how they do what they do, you’d be an idiot not to listen. Don’t be an idiot!

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Helltown (Warner Books, 2006). The life, death, and rebirth of Vic Sage in the crime-ridden streets of Hub City and the events that turned the crusading reporter into the faceless crime- and corruption-fighting Question.

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The Perils of Captain Mighty and the Redemption of Danny the Kid (2017). Denny’s fantastically metafictional and magically realistic story explores the life of Danny O’Boyle, a writer slowly drinking himself to death until he finds redemption in comic books and through his super-powered creations come to life.

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MORE

— PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite DENNY O’NEIL Books — Comics and Prose. Click here.

— The TOP 13 Denny O’Neil THE QUESTION Stories — RANKED. Click here.

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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. He also wrote an essay for DC’s Aquaman: 80 Years of the King of the Seven Seas. Check out his new memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life. 

Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/

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